Huge military fly past over Windsor Castle in May

As part of the Jubilee Celebrations, three days of events will be taking place at Windsor Castle, culminating in a Regal display on Saturday 19th May.

On the day, nearly 2,500 troops from the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force will parade through Windsor town centre before Her Majesty and The Duke of Edinburgh before heading into the Castle.

The rest of the event inside the Castle will be private, but there will also be a fly past over Windsor, which quite obviously will be visible to everyone in the area.

The flypast will comprise two separate aircraft formations – nine Typhoon fighter jets open the event, followed later by a large mixed formation which will include two formations of Tucano and Hawk aircraft; The Red Arrows; and aircraft from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

In all there will be a total of 85 aircraft taking part in the flypasts – and to put that into context, the Queen’s Birthday flypast over Buckingham Palace in June usually involves on average around 25 aircraft.

So it’s big!

As the time hasn’t been publicised, I am slightly guessing that the flypast will take place at 12 noon, as the local area air traffic control restrictions are removed at 11:20 UTC (12:20 BST).

The Flypast itself will form up at south of Goodwood/Chichester, West Sussex and route via Godalming, Farnborough and approaches Windsor via Ascot; the formation will overfly Windsor Castle and route via the west of Denham, RAF Halton and disperse in the RAF Brize Norton area.

So probably, a South to North flypast over Windsor.

My preliminary opinion is that the Copper Horse will be an excellent location to cover the approach as it is the highest point in the area, and the Home Park to get the back of the castle with the red arrows doing their stuff.

Hopefully, a more detailed flight plan will be published closer to the day – so those of us who love big flypasts can head over there can get the best vantage points.

Update 17th May 2012:

Well, just two days to go, and I still can’t get much more information about this.

The BBMF – WW2 vintage aircraft – have confirmed via their usual alerts their flypast is just before 12:30, but beyond that almost nothing is being announced. Normally, for a big flypast the RAF put out a decent participant list and route, but total silence. Weird.

Seems that the Typhoons are coming in at 11am for some reason, then the rest will be 12:20-12:30.

As to the military parade and muster in the town itself, the local council has put out more information:

The parade will start in Windsor Great Park just after 10.30am and march to the castle along the Long Walk. It will re-emerge at the top of Castle Hill at around 11am and move down Castle Hill, Thames Street and Datchet Road to re-enter the castle at Town Gate.

They recommend the best place to watch that is on the Long Walk – which ties in with my suggestion as that for viewing the flypast as well. If it flies along the length of the Long Walk, then that could be a good spot for photos as you get the length of the tree lined path, with the planes directly overhead.

In theory.

Second Update:

A few hours after my first, the RAF put out a press release and a basic schedule for the event.

Looks certain to be a south to north route and the full list of participating aircraft is now available here.

Essentially, don’t even think about driving into the centre, and I’d approach from the south and aim for the Sheet Street Road free parking (which is near the Long Walk and Copper Horse). Parking is strictly limited and controlled around the housing parts of Windsor at the best of times so don’t plan on finding a side road to park up in.